Eighteen Roses
by Labschiz
Summary: Two sisters. One grave. Eighteen memories to be remembered. Lucy helps Lois cope. [oneshot]


**A/N: **Er, this isn't _really _a fanfic. It was an original short story, written for a school assignment. BUT, I wanted to post it here and I'm too lazy to get a Fiction Press account, so while I was writing it, I was thinking about fandoms that would possibly match my story concept--and Smallville fits! Along the way, I added in a few details and nudged it in a direction that could fit with the canon. Changed names and removed a few sentences, but it's basically the same. (I don't know what Lois and Lucy's mother's name is, so I'm just keeping the original name I had for her. Yeah.)

So why Smallville? I guess I could have picked any other fandom (there are a lot of animes I can think of), but I really like the Smallville version of Lois Lane, and her character was perfect for what I was writing. This is probably because I always liked the type of person my narrator is, and I probably like Lois because she _is_ that kind of character. The relationship with Lucy isn't really consistent with my story, though. If you squint, it sort of is.

Honestly, I don't like this story. It's written badly, and I wrote most of it while I was sleep-deprived and sick. (Somehow, I got an A! Ah, the wonders of the education system.) And I like it even worse in fanfic!form. Gah. This author's note is too long.

**Disclaimer:** I don't claim rights to _Smallville_. No profit. No sue.

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**Eighteen Roses**

I had always looked up to my mother as a child, placed her upon a pedestal that was doomed for collapse by unrealistically high expectations. I wished to be strong like my mother and could not recall a time when she had ever seemed weak. Even as she lay in a hospital bed, the cancer eating away at her lungs and her life, she was always smiling—smiling for _me_—and I never doubted that she would be with me forever.

When I turned three, my mother gave me my first memory, a rose. She had been giving one to me on each of my birthdays ever since the day I was born, but the third was the first I could remember. I don't recall what color it was, but it must have been pink. They were all pink; it was her favorite color and became mine as well. I don't remember why she gave it to me, but I remember what she said that day, the warmth of her hands around mine as she spoke to me in that soft kind of voice reserved for babies and loved ones, sweet and light like cotton candy.

"We're going to plant a garden together someday," she told me. "I promise."

When I turned four it was the same—the same rose, same voice, same words—but my memories of that gift are much clearer. The smells seem sweeter and the shades of pink so much deeper. At five years my mother gave me yet another rose, this one from a bed in a white-walled hospital room where everything smelled too clean and too real. I remember the scent of my mother—or was it the scent of the rose?—because it made every hour spent in that room bearable.

By my sixth birthday my mother was dead. It was snowing at her funeral, all white with gray tombstones. I stood in front of her coffin as they lowered it into a hole in the ground, the General silent at my back, and my baby sister smothering her face into my jacket. She may have been crying, I don't remember, but I tried to comfort her all the same because it was what our mother would have done. I don't remember if I cried, either, or if I said anything at all. I don't remember much of that day but I know that I had a rose. We all did. Father had laid his onto our mother's coffin and so had my sister. I held onto mine and watched as other people tossed their own roses and flowers into the grave, into a hole that stretched on farther than my six-year-old hands could reach.

But reach I did. I searched for my mother in my memories and looked toward the future with bright, young eyes. I placed the rose in a vase on my windowsill and watered it every day. Expecting a garden, I was given a dream. The rose died, turned hard and lost its scent, the last memento of my mother a withered plant so pathetic to look at that I had to throw it away before my sister or father could get a chance to see.

My sister cried every night after the funeral and every night I held her hand, stroked her hair, and washed her face when she woke up from a restless, needy sleep. Soon, the crying stopped, but I continued to watch over her. She grew and I made sure she was healthy. I took her to school. I made her breakfast. I buttoned her coat before she stepped out the door into the cold, white snow. All of a sudden, she was eight and already four years had come and gone since our mother's passing. By then I had thought all memories of our mother were long buried, along with her coffin in the old town cemetery, but my sister still remembered somehow.

She would stare at me sometimes when I took her hand, large, sad eyes speaking volumes more than her then-limited vocabulary could have ever managed. I would pretend not to notice and so she would tug at my sleeve, begging.

"Lois," she would say. "Promise me that we can plant a garden together."

"Grow up," I would always respond and then wait for the silence to come. And eventually, she did grow up. She became a successful young woman while under my watchful eye. In high school she was the envy of her peers, a diligent worker, an intellectual, and everything I had never and probably would never become. She was perfect. She was ideal. She was my greatest accomplishment—my only accomplishment—and I was so _proud_.

My sister's move to a private school's dormitory elicited feelings of mixed happiness and anxiety from me. I was happy because those scholarships were certainly something to brag about. Anxious because while she was away from home she was also out of my sight and free to do as she pleased.

On the day she moved out, I waited by our front door to catch her before she left. I took her bags when she crossed the threshold and she did not protest.

I wanted to have a discussion with her about her behavior in a new setting. "Listen, Luce," I said as we waited for the General's car on our front lawn. Lucy glanced up at me from the corner of her eye—the glare was softened a bit by her pink mascara. "You're getting to be a big girl now so I shouldn't have to tell you to behave yourself."

Her voice was clipped but she didn't dare raise it against me, "No, you shouldn't."

I knew that I shouldn't. I _really_ shouldn't. But I did. "I'm just trying to look out for you, Lucy, and honestly, I can't see how you can survive once you're out in the real world. Hate to break it to you, baby sister, but not everything's as sugar-coated as people try to make it seem." I had to—it was for her own good. I trained my gaze on her face, trying to penetrate the curtain of brown bangs that hid from me her eyes and whatever emotions they might betray. I could not see her face, but I saw that her shoulders were already tense and her hands were fisted inside her coat pockets. I plowed on through, "For goodness sakes, you're already fifteen. You need to start taking your life seriously," as I said this she made an annoyed noise. "This isn't the time for fooling around, Luce. I mean- you don't even know what you're going to _be_ yet!"

I must have struck a nerve because her shoulders, which were already stiff, seemed to constrict further into themselves and she went rigid. "I've told you, I don't want to _be_ anything!" She turned to face me, hair whirling about red cheeks and narrowed eyes. "I just want to be myself for now and-"

"And what?" I scoffed. I stood up straighter and looked down on her. "Have _fun_?"

"Yes! I want to have fun! I want to enjoy my childhood while I still have it. I want to see new places and new things and I don't want to be stuck here under your leash and collar for the rest of my life! Don't you understand that?" Her voice cracked and I heard something more than anger or frustration in her, something that bordered on pleading.

I looked at Lucy and saw the little girl I had tucked in every night for years. "Don't be ridiculous," I said.

Her lower lip trembled a little before her mouth became set in an unforgiving line. She snatched her bags out of my hands. "All I want is to live my life. And that's the thing, Lois," she said with so much anger that it caught me off guard. "This is _my _life. And I want to live it by my own terms, not yours."

I couldn't believe her. "Wait a second, Luce-"

"Don't call me 'Luce.' My name is Lucy, so stop it already," her voice was low and tinged with a little anger and a little regret and, to my surprise, a little resignation. I tried to catch her eyes, but she was not looking at me anymore.

Suddenly, I felt as if something were slipping through my fingers and I reached out to grab my sister's hand, a gesture made familiar through years of repetition. Somehow, at that moment it felt awkward. Lucy flinched at our contact and snatched her hand away, too.

"You're not Mom."

After that day I seldom talked to my sister and had not seen her in person since. The first word I heard of her came in the form of a telephone call from her headmistress informing me that Lucy had gone missing. They guessed that she might have run away. I _knew_ that she had run, and that she would probably be halfway to Germany by the time our father would catch word of her disappearance. In retrospect, I realized that it had always been a dream of hers to travel the world and, at another time, it was one of my dreams as well. It was mine before I found out that dreams were only empty distractions. It was an old dream that had withered and died a long time ago and accidentally passed on to my sister, one of the very few second-hand things she had ever owned.

Thoughts of my sister almost always came with thoughts about our childhood. After I got the call from her school, I decided to take a walk and later found myself padding down the streets of our town, made cold and dark by the falling of nighttime. As I walked, I remembered things I hadn't thought about for years. I remembered my mother and the scent of fresh flowers. Around me the winter air smelled cold and clean, and I suddenly found myself wishing for roses.

I didn't realize where I was until I had already stumbled over a low, stoop of a grave marker, concealed beneath frost and snow. The graveyard was the same as it had been twelve years ago, all white and gray and absolutely still. It was snowing and the blanket over the ground had become thick enough for white flakes to be slipped into my rubber boots by the handfuls and soak into my leg warmers.

It occurred to me that I might be lost and that I had no idea what I was even looking for. My destination seemed to be at the end of a long, fading tunnel of forgotten memories and distant sensations. I felt my way through the tunnel, blindly groping at the corners of my mind for some hint or detail that could show me what I was looking for and why. I reached and found only an echo of the promise that had prompted my visit in the first place.

The sound of snow crunching brought my attention to a cluster of gravestones by my left and, suddenly, there was Lucy, a pink, wool scarf hugging the edges of her reddening cheeks and a bouquet of flowers tucked inside her arms. Flakes of snow were settling in her brown curls, and some part of me wanted to lend her my hat.

I met her eyes and she smiled, uneasy but pleased.

"I wasn't sure you'd be here," she said as she walked over to me. "I've never seen you here before, so I thought it might take a while."

By her expression, it was clear that she expected me to understand her. I didn't, but I nodded anyway, "I'm here now."

She was smiling. Whether she thought I understood or not, I did not know, but she was not looking at me anymore. Instead, her calm gaze settled upon a marble block, which stood resolutely above the fallen snow. I got closer and saw that it bore the engravings, "IN MEMORY OF CHRISTINE: LOVING WIFE AND MOTHER." I reached out to touch the stone but I could not feel it, my fingers safe inside my cotton gloves. I imagine it must have been cold.

Lucy came to stand behind me and shifted the flowers in her arms. I asked, "Are those for our mother?"

She shook her head and I saw her lips thin into a smile. "No," she said. "They're for you, actually." She gave me a one-shoulder shrug and handed me the bouquet. Her scarf slipped open and she tied it back herself. I glanced at her questioningly and she only said, "Happy eighteenth, Lo'."

My face must have betrayed my surprise because Lucy started laughing then, her voice wafting through the graveyard like a ring of Christmas bells, and it felt so _right_. She tossed her hair in typical teenage fashion and smiled, "Figures you'd forget your own birthday."

The cold and the snow had made my skin too numb to feel it, but I knew I must have been smiling. "Well, you always _were_ the smart one," I smirked and flicked my own hair back in mockery of her. "But at least I got all the looks."

She laughed again at that and I felt a tension leave my shoulders that I never realized was there before. "Thanks," I said, and I meant it, too. We were smiling and I didn't want to lose what we had gained, but I had to ask, "Why did you come here?"

My question was expected but none of the wariness I had come to anticipate in her face was present as she told me what I already knew, "I just wanted to say good bye—but only for a little bit. I just need to get away. You understand, don't you?"

I thought about it and was surprised to find that I did understand. "I do, and I'll miss you while you're gone, Lucy."

"You can call me Luce," she said, laughing. She began to walk away from me, leaving fresh footprints in the snow behind her. By the time she was out of my sight, her tracks had become small indentations in the blue-white dunes. Still smiling, I watched the snow for a while before turning to examine the bouquet still in my hands. There was a card with my name on it, which I slipped into my back pocket.

I took one last look at the marble slab before me. It was much smaller than I remembered. _Mom_, I thought, _I'm making up for lost time. _

And at the foot of the grave I left a dozen pink roses.


End file.
